Brett Fajen

Brett Fajen is a Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He directs the Perception and Action (PandA) Laboratory, where he investigates perception-action coupling, locomotion control, and perceptual-motor learning through immersive virtual environments and motion capture technology.

His research bridges ecological psychology, dynamical systems theory, and computational neuroscience. Key projects include studying optic flow in steering tasks, gaze-action coordination during obstacle avoidance, and neural models of self-motion perception. His work has applications in robotics, motor skill training, and sensory-motor rehabilitation.

Recent publications span topics including

• optical flow and aging
• curvilinear motion perception
• neural modeling of perceptual-motor learning
• adaptive sensory encoding mechanisms
• affordance-based decision making
• perceptual stability during locomotion

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Fajen serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance and has secured NIH funding for visual locomotion guidance studies.